


Strung Out

by 20Zvorak17



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 02:06:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11864391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/20Zvorak17/pseuds/20Zvorak17
Summary: In 11x17 Dean says 'If you want to help find me anything ending in Barbital'How does he know that?





	Strung Out

He finds the pills on a Thursday. Normally he appreciates the sanctity of having their own bedrooms. In their life, privacy is so hard to come by that when they've got it, the unspoken rule is to respect it. Dean honestly only means to grab Sam's laundry. But then he drops nearly half of it and when he crouches to pick it up he sees them: three orange bottles, one of them empty, the other two full of pills. For a second, he doesn't comprehend what he's seeing. This is...this is  _Sam_. Star soccer player, mathlete, all-american Sam. He grabs the bottles, starts a load of laundry and heads for the library to use one of the dial-up computers.

 _Phenobarbital,_ he types into the search engine. It's used to treat epilepsy, he learns, and overdosing on it is a damn quick way to die. He doesn't think that's what Sam is planning on doing--that one of the bottles was empty and Sam didn't nearly die tells him that the kid ain't taking them all at once.

But, apparently, all he had to do was take just a couple too many, even by accident and...

Drugs is bad enough. The kind that guarantee an overdose that's fatal (unless you are spitting distance from medical help and coherent enough to tell them what's going on) are a whole other animal.

He places the bottles on the coffee table and waits.

 

 

The door slams. "Sam, come here a sec."

"I'm not feeling too well, Dean. I was going to head up to my room and..."

"That isn't going to do you a lick of good, kiddo."

Sam walked in and to be fair, if Dean didn't know better, he'd think Sam was sick. Pale and with contrasting dark circles beneath his eyes. He's trembling a bit and looks unsteady on his feet. He's brought it on himself, though--this is a junkie who needs a hit.

"I know what this looks like. It's not what you think, Dean."

"Really? Then what is it? Looks to me like you're on drugs."

"I...was. I get strung out within 24 hours, though."

"Well if you quit 'em, I'll just go ahead and flush these."

"No!" Sam blurts and then appears to regret it.

"You just said you weren't taking them anymore. Unless you were planning to take a ton of them at once?"

"No. Maybe."

"See, I figure you did your research and it's why you went with these. Easy high, easy death if you feel like it. I did my research too, Sammy. The pills go."

 

 

Both of them had expected withdrawal to be worse. Shakes, cold sweats and headaches are really the worst of it. Dean had seen people coming off meth before...well, he'd seen Trainspotting...and expected this withdrawal to be kind of like that--hallucinations, vomiting, crawlies, the works. He'd worked at a garage with a guy who told him, in too much detail, about detoxing from heroin.

Either Sam is a tough son of a bitch or what he's experiencing is nothing like that.

For the next six months he watches Sam like a hawk. Counting the pain pills obsessively for a week if Sam has to take one after a hunt is the least of it: Bag checks, room checks, and Sam allows it, because he had been the one to fuck up.

 

 

It's fitting, therefore, that nearly two decades later, when it isn't phenobarbital (as Dean had always feared) that he thinks kills Sam, it is what temporarily kills Dean.


End file.
